75 GROW Week 1: Avoiding Crash Outs

how to start small and...no for real please stop making this challenge huge

Hello, my internet friends. We have reached the end of week one of 75 Grow (plus some change…did avoidance reach my writing desk? Yes, yes it did. We persevere).

As I send this out to you, it is August 11th, and we are already nearly in the middle of week two. Last week, I loved seeing the tagged posts on insta stories, your comments, and your responses to my polls I placed there (Insta really still has the corner on the market for interactive stories/polls/questions). Here are my findings from my (and some of your) experiences in the first 7 days of our 75 day challenge.

Remember: the entire point of this process is that we are viewing behavior change as a process rather than as a singular decision we force upon ourselves with rigidity over 2.5 months. We are just planting seeds at this point, and both you and I may need that reminder right now. It is easy to desire to bloom, and to look down at perhaps only dirt and scrawny, singular sprout and give up. A part of this process is expanding our perspective on time to be larger than just this week, which allows us to make slow, sustainable growth in the long-run.

Springtime, by Claude Monet

Field notes from week 1:

-I'm I'm resisting the urge to quote the that one East of Eden line (“now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good”) because that gets at a core idea of what we're trying to do with 75 Grow, especially when we compare it to other 75-day challenges on the internet and challenges in general online in a transformation culture. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do myself each time I do this challenge.

I am a big believer that learning not just the habit itself is a skill concern but that approaching failure and how we move with growing a habit is a meta-skill. Growth mindset is part of this level of meta-skills that can help, and help us hold a different narrative frame around challenge, the timescale of change, and what it means to not succeed/fix something all at once. Like most people, I too carry areas of life where it is easier for me to tap into a growth mindset (academics) and areas where it is harder (gestures vaguely towards abstract areas of life). In particular, when we have no stories or, worse, many stories that tell us this is not something changeable in our lives, it takes a lot of effort and repetition to keep trying at it and move in a different way. Sometimes, the things that have blocked us are not fair, and sometimes they are our own B.S. Either way, when we have a number of approaches to do something like finally regularly exercise and do the dishes, dammit, we have something akin to a narrative plaque build up that may paralyze us frequently. The purpose of this challenge is to try again (yes, again), but with more mindfulness, attention to what is and is not working, and self-compassion.

Core Habit 1: Movement

Move is my easiest one. I live in Boston, and it's very much a walkable city, and so I get a lot of steps easily, especially when the MBTA is doing MBTA things. I teach a strength bias Pilates class at Down Under Yoga in Cambridge three times a week, which I also count in this. Between these two things (which on the whole, I usually enjoy), I’ve engineered my life to make NOT getting movement pretty difficult.

HOWEVER…I have been trying to be regular-ish about running 3 times a week for the past two months after a minor injury, and the avoidance has been STRONG. I’m not where I once was with running, it’s hot AF out, and the all-or-nothing thinking gets really strong for me here. I started week one off strong with a 10K race in Maine with my best friend, and then a recover run and short treadmill run and then simply stopped for 7 days.

When I reflect on this, it’s because I’ve gotten too perfect about it AND too much into waiting for myself to want to do it. This week, a way I’ll try to edit it is by trying to do two one mile treadmill jogs, and not push it beyond that for now. I’ll also schedule it in the morning, because exercising post work at this point is just not it for me. In the runs, I’ll let myself walk when I need to. Hopefully, all of these things will reduce the amount of unpleasantness that is making me avoid, AND leaning a bit more into acceptance of that more manageable remaining discomfort will be needed.

From the Instagram DMs/Stories:

A few different people talked about movement in my Instagram stories. One of which shared, "I can't. I do have time to move more, and I do feel better. Damn it”. Noticing the impact of movement, especially if you're going from very little to more consistent movement in your life can have endorphins and the immediate cognitive/psychological impacts of exercise which help to intrinsically reinforce the habit. The other thing in reading everyone's reflections on this is having flexibility around choosing what kind of exercise works for you, especially now at the start. As with other habits here, a sort of smorgasbord of options to choose with movement can be really great.

Avoidance :/

Avoidance can combine into any of the other three habits of this challenge, and that's kind of more important than having four distinct separate actions, especially if avoidance has been hard for for this first week, or a general sense of overwhelm.

I don’t want this to be overwhelming for you or me. I want this to require effort, but not feel like something that is being added on top of all the stuff stressing you out. This is actually one of the reasons simplify is our last habit. We cannot add anything to overfull lives and expect that further psychological clutter will by itself change things.

For many of us, what we need to hear after week one of this experiment is this: make it smaller, but keep it consistent. If you cannot keep it consistent, you need to make it different. You not being able to do it is not allowed to be a sign you have a fixed trait of laziness for these 75 days—it needs to be a sign your garden needs a slightly different environment to grow this habit.

For those who work in medicine, my avoidance focus last week and this week is on creating a clearer Epic inbox/notes/emails. It’s a constant treadmill, but there are some small things that I can do better at to feel more on top of this. Additionally, letting myself write in different ways here for Substack is another strategy I’m using to help make avoidance slightly less scary.

One person mentioned as they wrote down all the things they were avoiding, it felt better and they felt more capable of doing it. A couple other people mentioned writing everything down and reported the opposite, ie a sense of overwhelm and paralysis that increased with making sense of the mountain of procrastination that lies ahead.

EVERY GARDEN GROWS DIFFERENTLY. Even different seeds of the same species can grow differently. This is why we must—as BORING AS IT IS—pay attention every day and each week of this challenge and ask ourselves the same questions, day in and day out, and note what happens.

If you struggled with avoidance this week, you may want to ask how the rigid coach part of you is making it too difficult for the rest of you. Then you ask if there is a way for me to make it pleasant? Is there a way for me to make it easier? Is there a way for me to do this with someone with body doubling help? If you imagine a gardener’s belt, it’s great that he has a shovel to dig in with, and yet, only having that one tool or skill does not make a master gardener. Will power is awesome—it cannot be your only tool here. What creative changes could make this one more easy to happen?

Practice Creativity / PLAY!

This was the hard one for some of you this first week, which was noted by multiple people in my DMs with a sense of surprise that it was. As I wrote about last week, I want this one to bring delight into our lives as well as flow. It’s easy to get crunchy about it, and you have to keep a lookout for this one becoming some monster trying to prove itself to you. I don’t want this—for you, dear reader, or me—to become ANOTHER thing we HAVEEEEE to do. If this is you, play may be the word you focus on rather than creative practice.

Play works for me because it tas into something that is much more robust as a flexible idea compared to the grand idea of being creative, especially as I continue my training in child psychiatry and I do play therapy and read about it. Play is productive in so far as we let ourselves be engaged in it. For my play this week, I made fridge magnets from old knick knacks, shells, and race medals. I got my nails done and doodled the inspo for the nail tech from a Hilma af Klint painting. I tried to play with how I dress each day when I go teach pilates. On Sunday, I attempted to do the water-color-esque cake painting for the season finale of House of the Dragon which turned out delicious, if not a little funky aesthetically. I, too, thought Play would be harder, but in week one, it flowed easily. Such is the way of the Garden, and of Nature.

One person who is an artist and owns an art studio mentioned that they felt like they were really struggling with this one, and then someone else noted their surprise and frustration that they found this one difficult. I hypothesize that one reason this can be hard is that play IS purposefully nebulous. When a child wants to play, you let them lead you, and they themselves let their imagination, interest, and intuition move them about the room. It would be easier, in a sense, if the challenge was to read for ten minutes or paint for fifteen or some other neat box that becomes a clear, Adult habit. This asks you to tune in, and tuning in is a skill.

Though I want us to embrace this, we can make it a bit easier as we get into it by again having options on deck. You know that saved folder you have on TikTok or here or pinterest of crafts and recipes and friend hangouts or things to do with your kids or makeup looks? View that as your Rol-o-dex of options. Otherwise, my play this week came from slowing down and asking how I can make some part of my ordinary, daily life a little more beautiful, my own, and engaging. This may help you generate some ideas as well.

Simplify

I want to make simplify more concrete for myself this week. This past week, similar to some of what you all said, is it's hard to think of individual ones for this.

I was only able to come up with a couple that I felt like really counted, which I’ll get into in a second. This one does not need to be big or grand, but I simply just didn’t put any thought into ideas for it a few of the past days, and I have the bandwidth to do a bit better than that.

One action I did do for simplify was reducing scheduling overwhelm on Sunday. When there is conversation around being always busy, often we talk about removing negative commitments from our lives. What we don’t talk about is knowing when we have enough, so that taking on more positive commitments will make things feel a little too frantic. On Sunday, for example, I had the option to stay in Maine and not come back to Boston until late Sunday night, maximizing on beach time and exploring the endless cute stores in Portland. If I was on my one time trip to Portland, Maine, that may have made more sense as a trade off, but friends I’m up there all the time, and for that Sunday and the following week, getting back and choosing not to do more when I could meant I woke up on Monday refreshed. Simplifying time and leaving buffers in the schedule for fluctuation in time and energy is one I’m really planning to work on this season.

I did a few other physical simplifying tasks, like cleaning out a few drawers of those back-up back-up workout clothes, and did the very Grown Woman thing of replacing various underthings (btw, if you’re ever in Boston, you do need to go to my favorite lingerie place, 40 Winks. They are also on the list of boutiques from MadisonAnneH on TikTok for having good bra fitters. Changed my life at age 28 to not be relying on when I was sized by a teenager from Victoria’s Secret in 2012…).

This is one where I want to pro-actively keep a running list on my phone of things I CAN choose from, but don’t have to choose from/commit to a specific date. This lets me pick the one that sounds best day of, with the fit with my own energy levels and commitments. I suggest this if you also struggled to come up with things to then do as a form of planning ahead this week.

Lastly, something I want to pay attention to this week is listening to the overwhelm and noticing patterns of when I’m really leaning hard on willpower as a tool, and see if it makes sense to make something simpler or easier in those recurring, patterned moments. This might mean Tuesday is a long clinic day for me, and so instead of running on empty, pretending I’m going to cook dinner when I get home, and then doordashing for overpriced, cold-ish food, I just pick up takeout right as I commute home. With this, we are once again back at the, “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” Sorry, but:

ALRIGHT FRIENDS: Onto week two!

Substack is doing the thing where it starts to yell at me for this email being too long, and I have once again failed on the whole, “I’m going to write a short, listicle article!” goal this week. There’s always the next one.

Reminder: next week’s letter will be for paid patrons only, so for the price of a very questionable sugary coffee drink, you can support my writing here and across socials. ($8…I enjoy lots of caffeine and a taste strength that the drink has a great great great grandmother that was actual black coffee).

Take care & take your time,

Margaret of Bad Art Every Day